


put down your sword & crown

by roslindi



Category: Kings
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 05:17:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roslindi/pseuds/roslindi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gath is hateful, which Jack expected, and lovely, which he did not. </p><p>(Post-series, Jack and David hiding out in Gath together, strong Jack/David and Michelle/David slant)</p>
            </blockquote>





	put down your sword & crown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [noharlembeat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/noharlembeat/gifts).



> 1 Sam. 18:4 -- _And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David, with his armor, including his sword and his bow and his belt._

Gath is hateful, which Jack expected, and lovely, which he did not. 

David flourished in the forests of Gath. He took quickly to the life of forest-dwelling nomadic rebel. _Typical_ , Jack thought, and if there was malice in that thought it wasn’t overwhelming. David all but shone with pure goodness; even Jack found it impossible to dislike him, though that didn’t stop him from making attempts. 

Jack did not take so easily to the Gathian woodlands. He was a city-forged prince down to his marrow: hammered out in the chrome and glass of Gilboa City. It’s not pleasant for him at first, but at least the constant roaming and uncertainty in a hostile country was better than the living death he escaped. The mosquito bites and the constant feeling of caked-on mud and the aching joints when he woke in the morning and collapsed at night were little sacrifices Jack was glad to offer up. There was no price he wouldn’t have been willing to pay to be free of his gilded tomb, and luckily he had still had friends in Gilboa. They had come to spirit him away long after he had lost hope, and brought him to David. 

Sometimes Jack and David slept shoulders pressing against each other on their backs, staring up at the canopy of leaves and the patches of heaven visible beyond it. Jack considered asking David about the constellations on more than one occasion. It seemed like the kind of thing a corn-fed golden-boy would know, the names of stars and ridiculous crap like that. Nothing Jack ever had time for. 

It’s easy not to think too much during the day, there’s always something to be done: gathering, hunting, cooking, trading with petty criminals, looking after the upkeep of the guns, evading arrest, plotting patricidal regicide. Even so, nothing ever managed to still the scratching anxieties of his thoughts. The only thing that ever managed to truly calm Jack was the presence of David. 

In the early hours of the morning, Jack woke just before the sun rose without the increasingly familiar heat and scent of David close by. The fire had either gone out or been put out sometime in the night, and Jack could see the lumps of the other members of the group curled in their survival sleeping bags. 

Jack sat up, neck stinging from the angle he held it in during his sleep, and looked for David. The sound of the stream the camp had settled near for the night caught Jack’s attention. With no logical explanation, Jack knew he would find David there. 

Jack was right. David did not notice Jack’s approach. He was standing in the middle of the quick-moving shallows of the stream, completely naked, head bent, eyes closed. For a second, Jack thought David had fallen asleep where he stood. He felt the laughter bubble in his throat, he felt almost fizzy with it the way the expensive champagne Mother served on happy occasions made him feel. But then he realized David hadn’t fallen asleep at all. For a second then, he thought David was crying. 

Jack was wrong. David’s eyes were shut tightly against the glare of the rising sun. His hands were limp at his sides, but there was tautness in the set of his shoulders that spoke of intense concentration. Jack understood when he noticed David’s lips forming soundless words. David was praying. 

David, of the gentle hands and kind eyes, always earnest and endearing, who believed with all his being in God, had not prayed once in the months since Jack had arrived in Gath. Not that Jack had seen, anyway. And wasn’t that unsettling? 

Jack decided not to disturb him. He waited impatiently on the carpet of damp, fallen leaves, willing David to notice him but unwilling to force his attention. Finally, David opened his eyes and noticed Jack. 

“Alright, David?” Jack asked. 

“Just continuing a conversation I started awhile ago.” David said. “How long have you been there?” 

Jack shrugged. “A minute,” he said, and then he tugged his shirt off. He was about to drop it out of habit (someone would come around to pluck it off the ground and whisk it away to be laundered) when he remembered not to, and instead folded it and laid it neatly on top of his shoes. He undid his belt and let the cargo pants slip to pool around his ankles before folding them too and adding them to the pile. 

David’s clothes were in a muddy heap. Jack frowned at them, “Jesus, David, did you roll in the mud more than usual?”

“I slipped on the way over,” said David.

It wasn’t awkward to join him in the shallows. Personal space and awkwardness had nearly been drilled out of him during his time in the Gilboan Army, and joining a pack of Gathian rebels had seeped out the last drops of it. There was no time or space or reason for unease anymore. Like so many things, even the smallest amount of privacy was a luxury Jack was no longer able to afford. 

He bent down and splashed water onto his legs, trying to wash away some of the dirt and dust. Jack was tired of the constantly feeling unclean. 

David’s voice then was unexpected, but not startling. “Are you going to ask?” 

Jack glanced sideways at him without bothering to stop rubbing down his leg. “I assume you were going through the usual litany.”

“Usual?”

“My Father and God used to be _pals_ ,” and Jack’s voice sounds venomous even to himself in that moment. “He always goes through the whole spiel of thanksgiving and requests. You know, _'thank you for Gilboa, please protect Gilboa, why haven't you struck my enemies with lightening? did you get my text because you didn't answer'_. He tells that damn story about the butterflies if given even a quarter of a chance. Doesn't even need half a chance.” 

David didn’t say anything to that. Instead, he said: “I think about Michelle all the time. I wonder where she is and what she is doing and if I’ll ever see her again.”

“Michelle’s fine,” Jack said. He had no way of being certain of it, they had not been able to communicate since before he was imprisoned in the palace and she exiled, and they shared no mystical ‘twin bond’ so popular in fiction, but Jack he knew his sister. She had a way of surprising, and getting through difficult situations with an enviable grace. 

“I still worry.”

Jack sighed. “If we must talk about dear Michelle, would you mind terribly if it we wait until sometime when we aren’t both naked?”

David laughed; it was a shocked, joyful noise and Jack’s eyes caught sight of a monarch butterfly that flitted past the back of David’s head in that moment. It hovered above his head for a moment just as the sunlight illuminated David from behind like one of the old portraits of saints that hung in the National Gallery of Gilboa. Then, with a flick of its wings, it was gone. 

They bathed together in silence after that, until Jack finally did ask. “What were you praying for?”

“I don’t know,” David said. “Hope, I suppose. I can’t seem to feel it anymore.” 

“I have that problem, sometimes.”

David studied Jack’s face at that admission. “How do you deal with it?”

“I look at you. You’re my hope.” 

David didn’t seem to know what to say to that. He stared Jack with wide, trusting eyes and looked like he wanted to say something, but wasn’t quite sure what. 

“Come on, Golden Boy,” Jack grinned at him. “I’ll let you wear my shirt or pants back to camp so you don’t have to put those filthy rags back on.”


End file.
